Jury: Novak killed wife, burned house

Ex-lover, pal turned witnesses added to drama of 7-week trial

MONTICELLO — Guilty. Paul Novak murdered his estranged wife by strangling her. He set Catherine Novak's western Sullivan County home ablaze to cover up the killing. Then he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance payments on Catherine's life and home in the tiny hamlet of Lava, just outside Narrowsburg.

Paul Novak murdered his estranged wife by strangling her. He set Catherine Novak's western Sullivan County home ablaze to cover up the killing. Then he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance payments on Catherine's life and home in the tiny hamlet of Lava, just outside Narrowsburg.

A jury of eight men and four women on Friday morning found the former paramedic guilty on all counts: First-degree murder, arson, grand larceny and insurance fraud.

Novak will be sentenced Dec. 19 in Sullivan County Court, where the trial — the longest in Sullivan history, said Judge Frank LaBuda — riveted a region for seven weeks, thanks to its sensational ingredients. They included an ex-lover and best friend-turned-star witnesses, and testimony by the country's leading forensic pathologist, Michael Baden.

When the verdict was read, Novak — momentarily freed from the chains with which he would soon be shackled — didn't flinch as he sat next to his lawyer, Gary Greenwald. His girlfriend, Kat DelGrosso, cried silent tears. Across the aisle in the wood-paneled courtroom filled with about 40 onlookers, the members of Catherine Novak's family seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief.

But outside the Sullivan County Courthouse, many of the 12 men and women who decided Novak's fate knew their verdict wasn't just about the guilt of one man who, according to his former girlfriend, Michelle LaFrance, and his former pal, Scott Sherwood, drove to Sullivan County from Long Island on the night of Dec. 12, 2008, intending to knock out Catherine with chloroform and kill her as she lay in the house he would burn. The same man who strangled is wife when the chloroform didn't work.

The jurors said they were weighing the burden of holding a man's life in their hands — and trying to do right by Catherine.

"We did it for the sake of the wife," said one juror.

And because they knew their verdict would forever alter lives, they deliberated long and hard — for two full days and about two hours of the third.

"You couldn't necessarily take Michelle's testimony alone, or Sherwood's," said another juror. "But taken all together, with everything else, it added up."

Said another juror:

"You get everyday people like us who are going to put someone away for life, it's tough."

That's one reason Catherine Novak's family, who stayed in Sullivan for some two months, expressed their gratitude for the verdict.

"We trusted the process, and now we know what happened," said Catherine's brother, Michael Lane, who thanked the people of Sullivan for their hospitality. "Now we're going to work with Paul's family to see what they need because this has been horrendous for all of us."

While Novak's lawyer, Gary Greenwald, said that "there will definitely be an appeal" because "justice is being delayed," Sullivan County District Attorney Jim Farrell — who tried the case with Steve Lungen, the DA at the time of the murder — said he was "extremely pleased with the jury's verdict" in this "extremely difficult case."

But more than an hour after the trial was over, and Paul Novak was back in Sullivan County Jail, one juror stood outside the courthouse and spoke of the case in more personal terms.

"I feel very bad for the children (Natalie Novak, 13, and her younger brother Nicholas, 10) who don't have a mother or father anymore," he said.

Then, turning to Catherine's family, the juror said, "I hope the day comes when you can smile."